Turn Out the Lights…

The Mighty Tigers have finally been silenced. Kelly’s team surrendered to the Grey Wolves on Saturday by a score of 2-1. (One would have thought that the larger feline could dispose of the smaller canine…)

Our girls came out a little flat, not playing with the same skill or intensity that they had shown the previous weekend. The defenders played with the ball too much, the offense couldn’t get going. The other team didn’t have any superstars, but they were so much like us that we could not establish a rhythm in the game.

Halftime passed without a score as the tension rose on both sidelines. After playing goalkeeper in the first quarter and sitting out the second, Kelly went back into goal, presumably for the remainder of the game. The game began to be played almost exclusively on our end of the field. Halfway through the quarter, disaster struck. One of our defenders committed an obvious handball infraction, one that the referee could not ignore. To everyone’s horror, the violation was in the penalty box, meaning the Grey Wolves would get a penalty kick. This is the one-on-one shot, in which the goalie must stay on the end line until the shot is struck, from about 20 feet away. Seeing Kelly, the smallest player on her team, swallowed up by the huge goal around her as she faced an opponent who is allowed line up the best shot, made me feel sick for her. We had worked for a while after practice last week in the front yard in the dark on getting low and making good stops, but a penalty shot is a no-win situation for a goalie, especially one who is a good couple of years away from being five feet tall.

Under a leaden sky, the shooter lined up. The other players jostled each other along the lines of the penalty box. Kelly stood impassive in the goal, her hands in a tentative ready position. I crouched behind our chair, half a field away and utterly unable to do anything to help her feel okay about giving up the first goal in a critical game under impossible circumstances. The referee blew the whistle.

She made the save. She made the save!

Not only did she make the save, but she had to dart to her left, staying low, to do so. For someone as small as she is, it was a remarkable achievement, but particularly so under the pressure-packed circumstances. Was I proud? I haven’t stopped smiling about it yet.

Of course, our defense continued its uncharacteristic downward spiral. Not three minutes after Kelly’s game-saving deflection of the penalty shot, one of her own defenders deflected an easy roller away from her into the goal. A few minutes after that, the Grey Wolves’ best player got loose close to the goal and launched a high, hard shot that none of our goalies could have stopped. Our star scored a late breakaway goal, but we all knew the game had been decided long before. The other team simply played better than we did that day.

In the end, the girls had a great season. Out of 24 teams in their division, they finished fifth. I watched two of the other games that weekend, and the two teams that will be in the championship game are not nearly the well-defined team that our girls had. One team depends entirely on a transcendent superstar (look for her in the Olympics, seriously), the other has a Big Girl and a Mouth.

Half of our girls were in tears for a little while after the game ended, such was their intensity, even if it arrived too late to inspire them to a win. In a world that increasingly encourages uniformity by rewarding mediocrity, it was refreshing to see young athletes care so deeply about the success of their team. After a few misty moments, Kelly shrugged it off and moved on with life. That’s good, too.